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      • NEW--Self-Portrait with a Million Dollars, by Patricia Clark
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      • NEW—Somatic, by Ann Keniston
      • NEW—Ghost Dogs, by Dion O'Reilly
      • Sugar Fix, by Kory Wells
      • The Honey of Earth, by David Graham
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      • The Bones of Winter Birds, by Ann Fisher-Wirth
      • Strange What Rises, by Gary Whitehead
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      • Aileron, by Geraldine Connolly
      • No Such Thing As Distance, by Karen Paul Holmes
      • Leaves Surface Like Skin, by Michelle Menting
      • How to Wear This Body, by Hayden Saunier
      • Travel Notes from the River Styx, by Susanna Lang
      • Route 66 and Its Sorrows, by Carolyn Miller
      • The Canopy, by Patricia Clark
      • Bluewords Greening, by Christine Stewart-Nunez
      • Cutting Room, by Jessica de Koninck
      • The Persistence of Longing, by Lynne Knight
      • Confessions of a Captured Angel, by Neil Carpathios
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      • The Practicing Poet: Writing Beyond the Basics
      • The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop
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      • NEW—A Constellation of Kisses
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Poem from A Constellation of Kisses featured on The Writer's Almanac

Picture
Friday, October 4, 2019
​Gate C22
 
At gate C22 in the Portland airport
a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed
a woman arriving from Orange County.
They kissed and kissed and kissed. Long after
the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons
and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking,
the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other
like he’d just staggered off the boat at Ellis Island,
like she’d been released at last from ICU, snapped
out of a coma, survived bone cancer, made it down
from Annapurna in only the clothes she was wearing.
 
Neither of them was young. His beard was gray.
She carried a few extra pounds you could imagine
her saying she had to lose. But they kissed lavish
kisses like the ocean in the early morning,
the way it gathers and swells, sucking
each rock under, swallowing it
again and again. We were all watching--
passengers waiting for the delayed flight
to San Jose, the stewardesses, the pilots,
the aproned woman icing Cinnabons, the man selling
sunglasses. We couldn’t look away. We could
taste the kisses crushed in our mouths.
 
But the best part was his face. When he drew back
and looked at her, his smile soft with wonder, almost
as though he were a mother still open from giving birth,
as your mother must have looked at you, no matter
what happened after—if she beat you or left you or
you’re lonely now—you once lay there, the vernix
not yet wiped off, and someone gazed at you
as if you were the first sunrise seen from the Earth.
The whole wing of the airport hushed,
all of us trying to slip into that woman’s middle-aged body,
her plaid Bermuda shorts, sleeveless blouse, glasses,
little gold hoop earrings, tilting our heads up.
 
                                    —Ellen Bass
Picture
Click to Purchase A Constellation of Kisses
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Terrapin Books
4 Midvale Ave.
West Caldwell,
New Jersey 07006

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  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Forthcoming
    • A Cartography of Home, by Hayden Saunier
    • Tell Me How You Got Here, by Emily Franklin
    • The Curator's Notes, by Robin Rosen Chang
    • These Few Seeds, by Meghan Sterling
    • The Feast Delayed, by Diane LeBlanc
    • The Wind Apples, by Jeff Ewing
  • Redux Series
  • Our Titles
    • Poetry Books >
      • NEW--Self-Portrait with a Million Dollars, by Patricia Clark
      • NEW—A Kinship with Ash, by Heather Swan
      • NEW—Kissing the Long Face of the Greyhound, by Yvonne Zipter
      • NEW—Somatic, by Ann Keniston
      • NEW—Ghost Dogs, by Dion O'Reilly
      • Sugar Fix, by Kory Wells
      • The Honey of Earth, by David Graham
      • The Davids Inside David, by Sarah Wetzel
      • The Bones of Winter Birds, by Ann Fisher-Wirth
      • Strange What Rises, by Gary Whitehead
      • Suspension, by Paige Riehl
      • The Northway, by Lisa Bellamy
      • The Infinite Doctrine of Water, by Michael T. Young
      • Aileron, by Geraldine Connolly
      • No Such Thing As Distance, by Karen Paul Holmes
      • Leaves Surface Like Skin, by Michelle Menting
      • How to Wear This Body, by Hayden Saunier
      • Travel Notes from the River Styx, by Susanna Lang
      • Route 66 and Its Sorrows, by Carolyn Miller
      • The Canopy, by Patricia Clark
      • Bluewords Greening, by Christine Stewart-Nunez
      • Cutting Room, by Jessica de Koninck
      • The Persistence of Longing, by Lynne Knight
      • Confessions of a Captured Angel, by Neil Carpathios
    • Craft Books >
      • The Practicing Poet: Writing Beyond the Basics
      • The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop
      • The Crafty Poet II: A Portable Workshop
    • Anthologies >
      • NEW—A Constellation of Kisses
      • The Book of Donuts, edited by Jason Lee Brown and Shanie Latham
      • The Doll Collection
  • Submissions
    • Guidelines
  • FAQs
  • Poetry Salon
  • Store
    • Poetry Books
    • Craft Books
    • Anthologies